Monthly Archives: February 2006

Defining the issue is the first step in winning the debate. And that’s what the pro-tax camp has successfully done, with the happy complicity of the MSM. Del. Vincent Callahan, R-McLean, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, understands what’s going on. Here’s how Michael Hardy and Jeff Schapiro quote him today in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Unlike the Senate and the governor who have defined the transportation crisis in terms of raising taxes, the House plan specifically addresses choke points and other measures that voters can identify with.

Unfortunately for Callahan, the media also has defined the transportation “crisis” as a problem of insufficient spending and taxes, which means that the very idea of prioritizing transportation spending by addressing choke points will not get any more of a hearing than a throw-away quote buried deep in a story.

Stacking the odds against Callahan and his colleagues even more, in this particular article Hardy and Schapiro label Senate Republicans as “moderates” — not “liberals” — for wanting to raise taxes and pour more money into Virginia’s failed transportation system. “Moderate,” of course, is meant as a synonym for the political middle, or mainstream. The House by contrast is a “redoubt of conservative Republicanism,” implying that delegates are out of the mainstream, for wanting to set spending priorities, reform VDOT, align transportation and land use planning, and not raise taxes in the face of a $1 billion surplus in the General Fund.

The failures of the media coverage of the 2006 transportation debate are scandalous.

The media refuse to examine the critical importance of land use in the transportation debate in any detail, even though Gov. Timothy M. Kaine made it a signature issue in the 2005 gubernatorial campaign, and though the House and Senate are moving closer to agreement on the issue.

The media continue to ignore the manner in which VDOT prioritizes and spends money on transportation, as if the undeniable accomplishments of former VDOT Commissioner Philip Shucet were the final word on VDOT reform. Changing the way VDOT does business is a major thrust of the House legislative package, yet the House critique has gone largely unreported.

The media continue to ignore alternative strategies for reducing and/or coping with traffic congestion. Telework, traffic-demand management, traffic light synchronization, roundabouts, ramp metering, blah, blah, woof, woof, readers know the drill.

When confronting President Bush over WMD, or making an issue over Vice President Cheney’s hunting accident, the MSM claims it has the responsibility to “ask the tough questions” and “speak truth to power.” But here in Virginia, the same editorial pundits who support speaking truth to power to George Bush only parrot the opinions of the local political elite. Reporters conduct he said/she said reporting within the parameters of the transportation-crisis-as-spending-shortfall storyline, and the editorial writers attack those in the House who would challenge the status quo.

I don’t entirely blame the Capitol press corps, which is tasked with covering dozens of issues emanating from the General Assembly. General political reporters can’t become experts on every issue. But I do blame the editors and publishers of the daily newspapers who fail to mobilize the journalistic assets to properly cover the most important public policy debate in Virginia this year — an issue that affects virtually every Virginian. The coverage has been so breath-taking superficial that the journalism profession in Virginia needs to understake some serious self-examination.

There is a growing concern about the spread of the avian flu virus (H5N1).

There is an equally virulent virus spreading rapidly in the northern part of Virginia.

Today’s WaPo reports that the proposed Loudoun County budget includes $45.5-million for roadway “improvements.” That takes the direct municipal spending on roadways from R=20 out to R=40 in the northern part of the crescent shaped subregion. Prince William County had already extended it from R=20 to R=30 in the southern part of the subregion.

Where the Virginia Subregion needs short-term mobility and access improvements to match functional settlement patterns is between R=0 and R=20 where almost all the jobs are now, where the vast majority of the jobs will be in the future and where new houses, services, recreation and structured amenity should be to create Balanced Communities inside the Clear Edge.

Until there is an agreed-to, functional settlement pattern at the neighborhood, village, community, and subregional scales (and not just a loosey-goosey sketch included in municipal “comprehensive” plans or the ghastly monster corridor plan of NVTA), removing “bottlenecks” in R=20 to R=40 will only encourage more to move to beyond R=45 (aka, West Culpeper, North Shenandoah and West Virginia.)

In the meantime the legislature is working hard to protect the “rights” of gun owners.

EMR

In his Richmond Times-Dispatch column today, Jeff Schapiro offers some insight into the lobbying behind the transportation debate: The Higher Ed lobby appears to be AWOL this year from the grand coalition of constituencies with a stake in state funding that have backed one another in the press for tax increases.

This band of strategists, schemers and schmoozers is at it again, pushing for a $1 billion-a-year fix for highways and transit that will require more taxes if Governor Tim Kaine and the Virginia Senate prevail over the House of Delegates.

But all is not sweetness and light within the “coalition of coalitions.” One of its more important members from 2004, taxpayer-backed higher education, is missing this year…

Read on for the details. I’ve been highly critical of the MSM coverage of the transportation debate. I’d be less vocal on the topic if we could see more analysis like this.

Thanks to Steve Haner for pointing out evidence of thinking about land use that has been taking place in the state Senate. This comes from a press release issued by Sen. Marty Williams, R-Newport News:

“There has been a growing awareness that our land use policies and our transportation planning need to go hand in hand. A number of Senate measures move in that direction. They would make local governments submit comprehensive plans, rezoning applications and subdivision plats to VDOT for review when it is anticipated they would have substantial impact on state roads. Another Senate measure requires fast-growing counties and cities to have ordinances regarding clustering of single family homes. And we will establish a joint subcommittee to study additional ways to integrate land use and transportation planning.”

Further, the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance lists these Senate initiatives as of Feb. 16:

SB 373 (Houck)– Allows localities to transfer development rights from a parcel of property in one part of a locality to a parcel in another part of the locality. (Passed Senate 38-0)

SB 699 (Houck)– Requires localities to submit comprehensive plans, rezoning applications and subdivision plats to VDOT for review when it is anticipated they would have substantial impact on state roads. (Passed Senate 40-0)

SB 374 (Watkins)– Requires fast-growing counties and cities to have ordinances regarding clustering of single family homes. (Passed Senate 40-0)

SJ 88 (Quayle)– Establishes Joint Subcommittee to study integration of land use and transportation planning. (Passed Senate 38-0)

It’s a start. If the Joint Subcommittee could lead to a meaningful airing of ideas, we could be moving in the right direction.

Sic Semper Tyrannis watched the debate over the Senate transportation package on closed-circuit television and records his impressions here. Among the more interesting tidbits was this anecdote (typos corrected):

Senator Fred Quayle threw out some numbers and said that the monthly burden on a driver caused by our new gas tax would be “the cost of one Super Value meal at McDonald’s, and looking around the chamber and looking at the people I see walking down the street out here in Richmond, I think everyone can part with one McDonald’s Super-Value meal a month.”

Ha! Ha! I bet that brought a hearty chuckle.

I don’t know what a Value Meal costs these days, but for purposes of argument, let’s say it’s $4. A Value Meal each month for 12 months amounts to $48 per year. Please note, for families with two drivers that translates into $96 a a year. For families with two working couples and a teenager, that’ $124 a year. Just a drop in the bucket.

OK, The median household for Virginians in 2003 (the most recent figures available) was $54,783. So, those “Value Meals’ account to a measly two-tenths of one percent of household income.

Now, let’s turn Quayle’s logic around. Let’s propose the state lop $66 million per year off the proposed 2007 budget. A big ol’ government like the Commonwealth of Virginia would barely notice such an insignificant sum! It’s “only” 0.2 percent of proposed expenditures. Looking around at fat politicians, bureaucrats and special interests feeding off the proposed $33 billion budget Sen. Quayle would probably conclude that the state could benefit from parting with a little extra poundage. Maybe he could start by trimming back the 6.3 percent increase — well in excess of the increase in taxpayers’ wages and salaries — planned for the General Assembly in 2007.

Ha! Ha!

(Thanks to Lucy Jones to pointing out my arithmetical blunder, now corrected!)

The Sunday morning paper brings this howler from the Virginian-Pilot (my emphasis added):

Under a Senate plan concocted to appease anti-taxers, the state would impose a 5 percent sales tax on the average wholesale price of gasoline. … Industrious consumers could reclaim their money, however, by saving gas receipts and applying twice a year for a 5 percent refund.

Troublesome and time-consuming as this sounds, the real culprits aren’t those who devised the rebate plan, but those who would entertain an increase in the gas tax no other way.

I’d say the real culprits are those who would entertain no solution to Virginia’s traffic congestion woes but tax, tax, build, build and will use any jury-rigged scheme they can to slip taxes past a wary public.

I owe an apology to my readers. I broke one of my own cardinal rules. There is no place in Bacon’s Rebellion for insults. Insults do not constitute an argument; insults only diminish the effectiveness of an argument. I would chastise anyone else who employed the rhetoric I used in the previous post (“The Worst of All Conceivable Solutions”) and so I must chastise myself.

The final paragraph of that post refers to various politicians and pundits as “brain dead” and “Terri Schiavos.” That was obvious hyperbole. But it was also out of place. That kind of language does not promote a civil discourse, which Bacon’s Rebellion is all about. I regret using that language, and I apologize to any politician, pundit or reader who might have been offended by it.

I hope that readers will follow my words, not my personal example, in keeping Bacon’s Rebellion a forum where people who disagree can interact civilly.

After studying transportation for more than a year, Virginia’s state Senate has passed one of the most atrocious pieces of legislation in recent history. The Senate transportation package, which passed 34 to 6 yesterday, did not have one redeeming virtue. Not one. It’s a transportation plan utterly so devoid of merit that only Virginia’s editorial writers could love it.

Let’s grant the Senate the charitable assumption that the solution to solving Virginia’s broken transportation system is to indiscriminately pour more money into it. Even by that standard, the legislation is a loser. According to Virginia Department of Transportation figures – the same figures used to justify a tax increase – the state will need $108 billion in new revenue to pursue a Business As Usual transportation policy over the next 20 years. That averages out to $5.4 billion yearly. By providing less than one-fifth that amount, the legislation falls far short. The Senate proposes no other solution for covering that gap.

But that’s only the first of the legislation’s many failings. The logical way to raise revenue would be to raise the retail gasoline tax, on the grounds that raising the cost of driving would have the salutary effect of encouraging people to drive less and reduce the stress on state roads. Instead, the Senate proposes collecting $210 million by increasing the tax on real estate transactions. Why the Senate chose not to raise taxes on, say, hair stylists or the sale of cucumbers as well, I can’t begin to imagine. The Senate also would raise the motor vehicle sales tax by three quarters of a percent, which would achieve the remarkable result of increasing the cost of car ownership without encouraging anyone to drive less!

Throw in a $10 registration fee and a tiny increase on the sale of diesel fuels, and there you have it. Oh, I nearly forgot the most ludicrous proposal of all: Raising $570 million a year by imposing a 5-percent wholesale tax on gasoline. Virginia’s esteemed Senators must think voters must be pretty stupid to see that as any less onerous than a tax on retail sales. But just in case motorists do see through the subterfuge, the Senate decided to “soften the blow,” in the words of Jeff Schapiro in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, by allowing them to file their gasoline receipts twice a year for a rebate.

Here’s a piece of unsolicited advice to the genius who came up with that idea: Those who think it’s too much trouble to file — half of all Virginians, according to your estimates — will curse you. Even those who do file their receipts will curse you — twice a year — for putting them through that nonsense in the first place!

But the thorough-going abdication of common sense does not stop there. Unless it plans to introduce companion legislation not mentioned in the press accounts, the Senate does absolutely nothing to address the transportation-land use connection. Gov. Timothy Kaine has advanced a proposal. So has the House. But the Senate has nothing to say on the subject.

Neither does the Senate consider any of the many alternative transportation strategies that have been articulated: telework, traffic-demand management, traffic-light synchronization, Bus Rapid Transit and many, many more. The philosophy of the Senate can be summarized thusly: Don’t reform land use. Don’t change VDOT. Don’t try anything new. Don’t change anything about transportation policy except the amount of money dumped into it. Tax, tax, pave, pave. Even the Road Builders lobby would be embarrassed to advance a legislative agenda so backward!

The Senate package is, arguably, the most reactionary legislation to come down the pike since the days of Massive Resistance. Indeed, massive resistance – as in, resistance to change – is an apt description of what the Senate has wrought. If Virginia voters had any sense, they would vote 34 senators out of office in two years — if they don’t laugh them out first.

But the senators do have one good thing going for them. If there’s anyone in Virginia more brain dead than the architects of this plan, it’s the Terri Schiavos in the tax-happy editorial departments of Virginia’s daily newspapers (excepting, in this case, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which rightly lampooned the tax rebate idea as “hare brained” this morning). If the past is any guide, the pundits will be praising the solons in the Senate for their courage and urging the Governor and the House to see their wisdom.

Further to the topic “Who Will Report the News?”

In our Thursday post CAUSE and EFFECT we included a By the Way (BTW: 1) which, expanded slightly for clarification, read:

“BTW 1: TAMU’s (Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University) Urban Mobility Report with 2003 data is out today. We will look at it with care when time allows but it appears at first glance to have the same strengths and weaknesses as the last 20 of these annual reports. (See our column “Spinning Data, Spinning Wheels” 20 September 2004 at BaconsRebellion on the TAMU 2004 report with 2002 data. We also posted a note on this blog on 10 May 2005 with a summary of the 2005 TAMU report.) On the “MSM-does-not-know-what-they-are-talking-about” theme, Forbes.com calls the report the “Urban Utility Report.””

It turns out there are errors in this note.

What was I thinking? TAMU is two years behind so the 2006 report should have 2004 data. It probably will when the 2006 report comes out. The Forbes.com coverage I saw on 16 Feb was a para for para rewrite of the first part of the CNN coverage from the 9 May 2005. There is information from a recent phone call to get a quote on what TAMU staffers “guess” the cost of delay is now because of gas price increases since 2003 but there is nothing new (aka, 2004 data) out yet. I found this out when I went to the TAMU site to follow up as promised and then backtracked when I found no new report. A check of our printouts of past studies confirmed the problem.

I should have been forewarned. The headline reads: “Worst Cities (sic) For Traffic.” TAMU is an “urbanized area” report, not a municipal (city) or regional report.

Also, by way of clarification, you may have seen a posting on this site that suggests that TAMU data supports the view that “the only cities (sic) that saw congestion levels fall were spread out Houston and Phoenix, along with job deficient Pittsburgh. Americas most traffic snarled cities (sic) are its densist (sic) and most transit intensive.”

Here is a quiz: How many errors can you spot in this quote?

Hint: The answer is more than four not counting the geographical misidentification.

Do not take our word for it. Go to the reports and see for yourself. (The reports for 2005 (2003 data) and 2004 (2002 data) plus information on many of the reports are easily accessed at http://tti.tamu.edu

It may save you time in getting a complete understanding of what the TAMU reports really say to first read “Spinning Data, Spinning Wheels,” (20 Sept 2004) at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

The spin on the information in the TAMU studies is impressive. So is the spin of the spin as noted above. All this raises again the problem of reliable information in a data besotted society.

EMR

Carrying forward the “Who Will Report the News?” theme…

It is “totally awesome” (to quote a favorite member of the extended family) to find a story on the front page of WaPo and a second story on the front page of the Metro section on one day that illustrate the CAUSE of human settlement pattern dysfunction and on the very next day see two more stories in the very same positions in the same paper that document the EFFECT of MSM malfunction.

Let us start with CAUSE on 15 February:

On the front page D’Vera Cohn has a story about “Inner Suburbs Fall Through the Cracks.” We will have more to say about the Brookings study and conference about which the WaPo story is written in the near future but the story (and the reports) provide a stark demonstration of the chaos caused by the use of the Core Confusing Words. (Problem One: failure to use a robust, functional Vocabulary.)

The front page of Metro presents a story by Susan DeFord about Doughoregan Manor titled “When the Past and Future Collide.” Here Geographic Illiteracy is on parade. There is a full color low oblique photo and a location map with the story. These tools document that most of the “where” and “what” elements of the story are pure MSM fiction. (Problem Two: lack of a comprehensive Conceptual Framework to describe human settlement patterns.)

On to the EFFECT in the 16 February WaPo:

The front page story by Steven Ginsberg is headlined: Region’s Traffic: “From Bad to Worse.” This should not surprise anyone but the “solution” is to build more roadways (in this case HOT lanes) to “solve the problem.”

The Metro front page story by Carol Morello features a map that documents that the focus in on a small part of REGIONAL immobility and lack of access.

The real problem is that so long as citizens have an understanding of the New Urban Region based on stories like the two in the 15 February edition, they and their governance practitioner representatives will have no clue about what to do about the lack of mobility and access or the Shelter Crisis.

BTW 1: TAMU’s Urban Mobility Report with 2003 data is out today. We will look at it with care when time allows but it appears at first glance to have the same strengths and weaknesses as the last 20 of these annual reports. (See our column “Spinning Data, Spinning Wheels” 20 September 2004 at BaconsRebellion.) On the “MSM-does-not-know-what-they-are-talking-about” theme, Forbes.com calls the report the “Urban Utility Report.”

BTW 2: It goes without saying perhaps but Jim Bacon’s note earlier on “he said, she said journalism” (with a small, small “j”) is right on and so are the comments on “entertainment” and on the spin we can expect from “news makers.” We deal with the entertainment issue in the section titled “Economic Competition’s Impact on Language and the MainStream Media” in our column “Deconstructing the Tower of Babel,” 12 December 2005.

EMR

The House of Delegates looks like it has its political act together. In marked contrast to the 2004 session, in which tax-hike foes repeatedly backtracked and compromised, the House has passed its transportation package lock, stock and smoking barrel. Many measures passed unanimously, which means that even House Democrats are on board, and even the most controversial measures won approval by comfortable margins.

There will be no repeat of 2004, in which a Democratic Governor successfully triangulated between two Republican-controlled chambers of the General Assembly.

For a list of all the bills that will be referred to the Senate, refer to our post on the Road to Ruin blog.

The national Mainstream Media has lost all credibility with me. I believe nothing, and I mean nothing, that I see on network TV. The facts reported by the MSM may be accurate (most of the time) but context is everything. What facts were omitted? What was the spin? What other stories simply go unacknowledged and unreported? The bias, usually constrained in the past, is now totally out of control.

State/local journalists haven’t descended to the depths of their national counterparts, but their failures and limitations are glaring even so. I dedicated my most recent column, “Breakthrough,” to castigating the superficial and incomplete treatment of the House of Delegates’ transportation initiative. In the post below (“What is the ‘Senate GOP Trust?'”), I take note of the MSM’s failure to illuminate what appears to be a formalized schism within the GOP ranks of the state Senate.

A recurring theme in this blog is, “Who Will Gather the News?” As the MSM business model fails, resources are cut and the quality of its political reporting continues to flag, where will people get their news? The news, I think, will come increasingly from bloggers and the newsmakers themselves.

In touting the contribution of bloggers, I would refer to my own humble efforts. Every column I write for the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine is based upon outside research and interviews. But I am not the only blogger doing reporting. To cite one recent example, I refer you to the reporting by Norm Leahy at One Man’s Trash of remarks that former Gov. Jim Gilmore made to the Tuesday Morning Group. (Click here and scroll down to “Jim Gilmore at TMG.”) I would also commend the work of Waldo Jaquith, who blogs direct from the General Assembly, and Conaway Haskins at South of the James who does a lot of fact gathering for many of his columns.

Of even greater interest, perhaps, is the commentary coming directly from the newsmakers themselves — bypassing the MSM and going straight to the public. Ken Cuccinelli’s “Cuccinelli Compass” is a good example. (See post below.) In the 2005 General Assembly, the Governor’s Office and the two political parties were the most reliable source of news and quotes, updating their websites and spitting out e-mails. This year, the number of press releases and e-mail communications seems to be increasing exponentially.

A daily news clipping service distributed by Scott Leake at the Senate’s Republican Leadership Trust packages the MSM news in a useful, easy-to-read format that saves readers the trouble of consulting a dozen individual newspaper websites. The Tuesday Morning Groups sends out daily e-mails updating readers on legislation of interest to that group. Virginians for Death Tax Repeal provide frequent e-mail updates. In just the last few days, I’ve received updates from Gov. Tim Kaine, Senate Majority Leader Walter Stosch, House Speaker Bill Howell, Attorney General Bob McDonnell and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling. I dare not even contemplate the number of lobbying groups that are blasting out e-mail alerts — thankfully, I’m not on their distribution lists.

If I’m getting these communications, so is every other political blogger in Virginia who posts an e-mail address. For anyone who cares, it’s easier than ever to get their news straight from the source. Why bother reading he said/she said newspaper articles when you can read what he/she said unfiltered and unadulterated?

Republicans in the Virginia state Senate have a “Republican Caucus” that, in theory, convenes periodically to hash out legislative and political strategy. But it appears that decision-making power has shifted to an entity referred to as the “Republican Leadership Trust,” which excludes the handful of conservative Republicans in the Senate.

I first heard of this group in one of the periodic e-mail missives distributed by Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, R-Centreville:

Well, I’m sitting on the Senate floor at 1:30 p.m. on crossover day. The Senate is in recess until 3 p.m. I believe that part of the reason that we’re in recess is so the Senate GOP Trust Senators (the leadership, etc.) can meet to plot legislative strategy. I and some other conservatives are not members of “the Trust,” so I have a bit of a break. I can’t help thinking that that sort of discussion is exactly what a
Republican Caucus is supposed to do…

I’m not exactly what you’d call a General Assembly insider — I’ve yet to set foot in the state Capitol so far this session. But I do read the press accounts with some frequency. If anyone in our intrepid press corps has written about the “Republican Leadership Trust,” I haven’t seen it. I am almost certain that no one has made the existence of this GOP schism the focal point of a story.

It’s certainly not news that there are divisions within the Senate GOP. But it is news that a sub-set of the GOP Caucus is now formally excluding conservative members from important deliberations. One of the jobs of the media is to track the shifting loci of power in the General Assembly. If the MSM fails in its duties to provide context and meaning to events in the General Assembly, new mechanisms and institutions will arise to replace it. Which leads me to my next post…

Update: As readers have informed me in the comments section, the press has covered the Republican Leadership Trust. I take full responsibility for my ignorance of the subject and will readily admit, in this particular regard, that I was too quick to blame the press corps for not writing about it. Additionally, it is important to note that the Trust did not “exclude” other senators, as I stated above, but that some senators declined to participate. Still, it is interesting to note that decision making, on some issues at least, has shifted from a caucus of all Republican senators to this smaller body.

Edgar Olson is calling for an end to public housing as we know it. Rather than sticking poor families in federally run housing projects, the University of Virginia economics professors argues, the government should give them vouchers. (Read the UVa profile here.)

“It costs much less to provide equally good housing with housing vouchers than with public housing projects,” Olsen wrote in a prepared statement he was scheduled to deliver in testimony to Congress Wednesday. “Therefore, shifting the budget for public housing to housing vouchers would allow us to serve all of the families served by public housing equally well … and serve hundreds of thousands of additional families.”

The federal government has proven itself to be one of the world’s worst property managers, but it is proficient at redistributing income. It just makes sense: Instead of building housing for poor people, just stroke them a check to find an apartment of their own.

Vouchers would make good social policy too, a point that the brief article doesn’t make. Housing projects concentrate poor people in places where there are few successful role models and few working/middle class people to constrain criminal behavior. Giving poor people vouchers gives them more latitude in where they live.

Sounds great… except for one thing. It’s the old slippery slope argument. Give ’em vouchers for housing, and the next thing you know, they’ll be asking for vouchers for schools. Can’t have that!

The Wall Street Journal has published a front-page profile (reprinted here in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) of Don Blankenship, CEO of Richmond-based Massey Energy Co., who has spent millions of dollars of his own money trying to make West Virginia more business-friendly. With the impetus to raise taxes here in Virginia, I wish he’d be a little more active in his headquarters town.

Truth be told, Blankenship is a West Virginia boy, born and bred, and he spends most of his time in West By God Virginia, where the bulk of Massey’s coal operations are located. Despite its size — revenues exceed $2 billion — the company keeps an incredibly low profile here in Richmond.

Back in the 1970s, SW Virginia coal barons ranked among the largest campaign contributors in the state. When the coal business went bust, they largely dropped out of the picture. With their fortunes reviving — Alpha Natural Resources has assembled a $1.5 billion-a-year enterprise, and the United Company is reconstituting its old coal empire — it may not be long before United’s Jim McGlothlin and Alpha’s Michael Quillen become familiar faces on the political scene once again.